What are your thoughts on the fertiliser price s for 2022

If you're going to the bother of sowing in the first place - it's no extra hassle to put a few other seeds down the spout - ( as long as the cost isn't prohibitive )

How will you be stitching it in?

The more species the better.

Will there be more Maize grown now?

What fert slurry would you be saying to put on it ?

What about index 1 ground with ph of 5.5?

Well worth a read to have an appreciation of how our current problems were caused.

Is it an easy read, or more like a book you’d have to study Sam?

Hyperinflation is already here....as far as the author is concerned money is worth sweet fook all if that hardcover price isn't a misprint

Does he suggest any strategies/hedges against the elephant called impending clusterfuck thrusting it's groin in my general direction while remaining relatively unseen so far in the room.

These would be tillage lads who'd have a long running thing with the piggeries. Big acreage as well, beet maize as well as grain

The general idea is that the interaction between stable money and the economy is like spokes in a bicycle wheel.

The whole think is kept in relative balance but when you start expansionary monetary policies, that changes.

Areas of the economy that don't deserve allocations of wealth start to do better than they should (tech, speculation etc) while the backbone of the productive economy gets squeezed (ag, mining, energy, transport).

Pre globalisation the whole thing seems to have been harder to maintain. But the modern world economy seems to have been able to push it much much further.

So what we're seeing now is major under investment in fossil fuel energy and transport rearing it's head, and farmers slowly getting poorer over the past decade(all in relative terms) leading to them not being able to take the fert increases in there stride.

So go back to the analogy of the wheel and much more force was being transmitted through fewer spokes, creating a wobble in the wheel. Could have carried on longer but we hit the pothole that is covid and the whole thing is going to sh1t because the distribution of capital/profit has moved so much from where it should be in a more resilient economy that depends on real wealth generation and not paper profits.

The problem now is that everything is so far out of kilter that it's hard to know what is real and what's not.

The end point has to be increased interest rates and bankruptcies. So weathering that storm is the most important thing.

It's too late in the day to be worried about where to invest money as almost everything is in a bubble anyway.

Minimising debt and maximising self sufficiency is about the best any of us can do. Farming has been through lots of busts and not being locked into a system designed purely for profits in good times is the biggest concern anyone should have. As there's not a whole pile that can be done about the rest anyway.

"The life of the inflation in its ripening stage was a paradox which had its own unmistakable characteristics. One was the great wealth, at least of those favored by the boom..Many great fortunes sprang up overnight...The cities, had an aimless and wanton youth"

"Prices in Germany were steady, and both business and the stock market were booming. The exchange rate of the mark against the dollar and other currencies actually rose for a time, and the mark was momentarily the strongest currency in the world" on inflation's eve.

"Side by side with the wealth were the pockets of poverty. Greater numbers of people remained on the outside of the easy money, looking in but not able to enter. The crime rate soared."

"Accounts of the time tell of a progressive demoralization which crept over the common people, compounded of their weariness with the breakneck pace, to no visible purpose, and their fears from watching their own precarious positions slip while others grew so conspicuously rich."

"Almost any kind of business could make money. Business failures and bankruptcies became few. The boom suspended the normal processes of natural selection by which the nonessential and ineffective otherwise would have been culled out."

"Speculation alone, while adding nothing to Germany's wealth, became one of its largest activities. The fever to join in turning a quick mark infected nearly all classes..Everyone from the elevator operator up was playing the market."

"The volumes of turnover in securities on the Berlin Bourse became so high that the financial industry could not keep up with the paperwork...and the Bourse was obliged to close several days a week to work off the backlog"

"all the marks that existed in the world in the summer of 1922 were not worth enough, by November of 1923, to buy a single newspaper or a tram ticket. That was the spectacular part of the collapse, but most of the real loss in money wealth had been suffered much earlier."

 "Throughout these years the structure was quietly building itself up for the blow. Germany's inflationcycle ran not for a year but for nine years, representing eight years of gestation and only one year of collapse"

From the book.

"The people of the banks of the Guadalquivir marvelled at the precious particles of earth brought to the surface by the labour of the Indians and transported thence by our courage and industry: but the possession and abundance of such wealth altered everything. Agriculture laid down the plough, clothed herself in silk and softened her work calloused hands. Trade put on a noble air, exchanging the work bench for the saddle, went out to parade up and down the streets. The arts disdained mechanical tools.

Coins of silver and gold spurned kinship with base alloy, and refusing all other metals kept themselves pure and noble, and the nation's sought after them by all manner of means. Goods became proud, and when silver and gold fell in esteem, they raised their prices...

As men promised more from their incomes then in reality they had, ostentation and royal pomp grew, pensions, pay and other items of crown payments rose on the basis of foreign wealth, which was too badly administered and kept to meet so much expense, and this gave rise to debt."

Saavedra fajardo writing on the effect of incoming american gold in the 1600s.

Rang Kerry this morning , was told they would tell me the prices but no fertilizer for me as last year I bought in April, giving lads who bought in Dec last year first refusal and at 50% , not in amount, of u spent 10 grand last year Ur allowed to purchas 5 grand of fertilizer

Yes we’re experiencing come inflation now but there’s no risk of hyperinflation like that in the Weimar. That was put in place to try and reduce the pain of war reparations.

The inflation that we’re seeing now is more of an upward adjustment after years of stagnation, especially in wages. Globalisation by its nature is deflationary because of the mobility of corporations…if wages in Dublin get too high corporations can move to where wages are much less, and so on. I’m encouraged by the fact that workers are finally getting a rise in wages, even if it’s at a time of overall inflation.

Yes printed money is helping inflation but it’s mostly down to countries having both labor and supplies shortages due to COVID. Things will/should settle when/if we get free of the pandemic. Inflation has always been good for agriculture but this time it coincides with the exponential growth of fertilizer prices…again it should be transitory.

How is inflation good for agriculture when we are actually getting paid less than we got paid 40 years ago despite all our products inputs increasing multiple times over.

They weren’t growing any barley at that ph…oats yes, maybe wheat at a push.

Conacre?

I wouldn’t grow maize on ground that’s spun out like that. Give it plenty fym/slurry for a few years and give it a go then.